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Friday, February 24, 2012

Early last Tuesday morning my hunky farmguy Joe drove off to spend a week visiting his family out of state. We planned the trip so he would be back in time for lambing season, which would be starting around the first of March.

Estelle decided not to wait.

So far she and her twins, who were born a couple of hours ago, are doing great. And if 2012 is anything like 2011, there are going to be a lot more lambs bouncing around the barn by the time Joe arrives back home Monday night.

And so it begins!

Need a bigger dose of lamb cute right now? You'll find all the 2011 lambing season posts here and here. (This photo is one of my favorites.) I'll be down at the barn.

18 comments:

Hi Jen,They're both boys. As for names, we don't usually name the boys, but we sometimes use our alphabet naming system (we started with 'A' names in 2004 and are up to 'I' for 2012) to give all the boys the same name. For 'B' it was Boy, 'D' was Dude, 'G' was Guy, 'H' was handsome. . . :)

Hi td,Yes, twins are pretty common with sheep, and some breeds even have lots of triplets. My very first ewe to give birth during my first lambing season back in 1996 (when I was totally clueless) had quadruplets! Two survived and I kept them as pets (big wethers named Chip and Chip), and they lived to be 14½ and 15½, which is pretty much unheard of for sheep.

Our moms have been really good about having enough milk and accepting all three of their lambs, but I usually end up supplementing with bottles of milk, which of course is extra work and expense. Triplets are definitely adorable, though. :)

Hi Sue,I don't know if that's true or not, but it would certainly make sense. I do know that animals are much more sensitive to things like changes in the weather and pressure systems than we are, and Friday was really strange. It was 70° Thursday and then dropped into the 20s Thursday night, and Friday was in the 40s and really windy.

All the animals were acting kind of nuts - the donkeys were racing all over the place, Cary and Teddy were ramming the heck out of each other - and my guess is that whatever was going on somehow affected Estelle and Lucky Cherry, who had her baby early yesterday morning. But I'm getting ahead of myself - Lucky Cherry is the subject of today's post that I'm supposed to be working on! :)

Happy to find your blog! I stumbled on it while searching about my beet tops, I sowed last Oct. and they look great, it's Feb. and I wondered if I could still eat them?? Well after reading some of your articles I will be cooking some up tonight! What a wonderful all season planting they are!!Thanks for your great articles

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